Love, and Other Things That Hurt

Epilogue

Ginny opened her eyes.

The Gryffindor dorm room was empty and silent. As she sat up slowly, a slight summer breeze fluttered in through the open window, touseling the hangings of her four-poster bed. She could hear chatter from the grounds and banging and thumping from the surrounding dormitories combined with the scraping of trunks across scuffed wooden floor. She sat very still for a long moment, her eyes staring unseeingly out the window, before numbly registering the actively she could hear faintly around around her.

It was time to go home.

She rose, dressed, brushed out her long fiery hair. The girl in the mirror stared back, freckles scattered across her nose, bright hazel eyes blank and mouth pursed.

It was the same girl she had been a year ago at sixteen, albeit older, but there was a change. The past year had been spent picking up the remnants of a quietly broken heart and wordlessly piecing them back together. The bleeding stopped after a few weeks and slowly the color had returned to Ginny's face. When the Hogwarts Express deposited them at King's Cross on the the day after the Leaving Feast, which she had spent in the dormitory alone, she hugged Hermione and held on so long that eventually Ron tapped her on the back to indicate it was his turn. Her family still didn't know about Ginny's hospital stay and Madam Pomfrey had agreed not to enlighten them most reluctantly.

"Very well," she had relented finally. "I shall keep my silence. But if I may offer my....professional advice, Ginevra, your emotional healing would keep better pace with your physical recovery if you were to have the support of your loved ones."

As Ginny turned away, Hermione had gently grabbed her arm. "I'll see you soon," she promised, smiling in a reassuring sort of way. "Really, Ginny. I'll visit lots."

Ginny had nodded, forcing a smile of her own before turning towards Harlow and Linnea, both of whom were waiting to envelope her in a tight hug, making promises to write and meet in Diagon Alley to buy books in August before Harlow leapt on Harry in a tackle hug and Neville began frantically snogging Linnea against the stone wall as though he was afraid she would vanish if they were not sandwiched together. When Ginny emerged onto the main station platform alone, she had seen her mother hurrying towards her, arms outstretched.

"Oh Ginny!" Molly exclaimed, throwing her arms around her youngest child. "I was so worried about you, dear. How are you? Did your exams go alright?"

"Everything is great, Mum," Ginny had replied without missing a beat. "Let's go home, OK?"

The summer had dragged on with the excruciating sensation of eternity. Fall passed in a blur. Winter was a haze of white and grey. Ginny poured herself into Quidditch and her schoolwork and before she knew it, it was spring and N.E.W.T. prep time. She was grateful - she was still asked out on dates and Hogsmeade visits regularly, and it was nice to have a legitimate excuse to decline. She joined Charms Club with Linnea and Luna to fill her one free evening and never missed a mealtime beside Harlow and Colin. For the first term she had spent the nighttime tossing and turning restlessly with unsettled dreams coming and going but never lingering past her waking moments. Madam Pomfrey prescribed her a tonic for dreamless sleep, cautioning her only to use it as needed. It was months before she could finally put the bottle aside.

And now it had come - the end of seventh year. The end of life as she knew it. Ginny had arrived at Hogwarts at eleven years old positively shivering with anticipation after many long years of watching her brothers go before her and now as she stared at her taut reflection, it was hard to imagine being anywhere else. She knew her life was about to be swept into a turmoil of questions about the future, about choices, career decisions, growing up. She had been preparing for it for a year and yet the idea of taking that final ride on the Hogwarts Express back to London had her paralyzed.

Her musing was interrupted by the opening of the dormitory door. Harlow poked her head it.

"Ginevra!" she exclaimed, bounding towards her and clasping her in a tight hug. "Finally, you're awake. Hurry up and come down for breakfast. Everyone is saying goodbye." She dashed from the room again. Ginny dressed slowly, closed her trunk, lay it on her made bed. She lay her head against one of the bedposts and inhaled the familiar dusty smell of the hangings before backing out of the dormitory and closing the door behind her.

Ginny silently made her way down the spiral staircase and through the clean, quiet common room. When she made to climb through the portrait hole, she hesitated, but thought better of taking a last look. The school corridors were empty of beings living or dead and the closer she got to the group of chattering voices down the spiral staircase into the Entrance Hall, the more she wished she could climb into a suit of armor and hide there until everyone was gone. At the top of the stairs, she froze. A split second of indecision later she had doubled back, and without giving it a single thought, her feet led her to her unplanned destination.

The door was waiting for her when she opened her eyes, just as it always had. The same scarred wood. The same tarnished handle. Ginny stared at it for what felt like a very long time. She hadn't been back since that last night, the one she spent alone. Draco disappeared the next day. He wasn't at breakfast, wasn't at lunch, and by dinnertime, the rumors had started swirling throughout the Great Hall, the corridors and the common rooms. He had been expelled for fixing the Quidditch final. He was under suspicion for cheating on the N.E.W.T.s. He had been offered a department head position at the Ministry of Magic. He had flown off on a broomstick just like Fred and George Weasley. Hermione was prone to snapping at anyone who speculated on the disappearance but Ginny didn't care where he had gone or why. She just hoped that wherever he was, he was happy.

When she finally opened the door, she braced herself for a flood of memories and heartbreaking emotion that did not come. The room was exactly as they had last left it - not the time she had returned alone, but how it had been on the nights she lay sprawled across the bed, waiting for the door to open with a familiar creak, or when she emerged to find him there waiting for her, illuminated in the flickering candlelight. Ginny stood in the doorway, all the air leaving her lungs. She had never considered returning to this place that had held both love and loss, and now that she was here, she never wanted to leave.

A clock chimed in the distance and Ginny stepped back, squeezing her eyes shut against the burning of her tear ducts. She didn't cry much these days, but she had a feeling that once the floodgates were open she would not be able to shut them again. If there was one thing that the last long lonely year had taught her, it was that tears only made things harder.

"Ahem."

Ginny nearly jumped out of her skin, and as she wheeled around, her shock merely doubled. Standing before her in long sweeping robes of blue was Albus Dumbledore, half moon spectacles perched on his crooked nose and hands clasped neatly in front of him.

"Professor!" Ginny closed the door to the Room of Requirement with a snap and stepped back so that her back was pressed against the doorknob that she felt melting away as the door reverted back to wall.

"Miss Weasley." Dumbledore was smiling. "I wondered if I might find you here." Ginny blushed but he merely continued benignly. "The Hogwarts Express will arrive in Hogsmeade at any time now. The students have started making their way to the station. Shall we?" He gestured down the hall that led towards the Entrance Hall and Ginny nodded, falling into step beside the Headmaster as they began making their way.

They walked in silence for a long time before Ginny couldn't help but break the silence. "Professor -" she began, but Dumbledore held up a hand, still smiling.

"There is no need to explain," he said gently, continuing his steady pace as she hurried to keep up. "I quite understand. This is the end of an era for you and your classmates. I know that when I left Hogwarts, I very much felt like I was leaving home."

"And now you're back, Professor," Ginny said. Dumbledore nodded.

"I have traveled many places. Seen and done many things all over this great earth. And yet it remans - home is where the heart is, Ginevra. And..." He heaved a great sigh. "The heart is not so easily relocated."

The burning behind Ginny's eyes persisted. "Professor," she asked before she could stop herself. "Does it get easier?"

Dumbledore merely carried on at his easy pace, clearly knowing she wasn't finished.

"I mean," Ginny said, her heart and head pounding in tandem as she struggled against her burning eyes. "Changing. Growing up. Feeling...whole again."

Dumbledore sighed once more but didn't reply for a long moment. "Ah, Ginevra," he said with a small, sad smile. "Nothing is ever easy with a broken heart. But it is possible. And possibility is the foothold upon which we can reach for the strength to move on."

"How did you...?" Ginny began, but Dumbledore's sad smile turned towards the windows they walked past through which the lake was visible. In the distance, Ginny could see the same tree she had once lain under on a chilly fall afternoon, curled up in Draco's arms while everyone was at lunch. It was these memories that revisted her so sparingly these days that made her feel as though she was about to unravel all over again.

"You are a brave young woman," Dumbledore said suddenly, and with that, the tears spilled over, silently trailing down her face. She could hear voices growing louder and knew they were nearing the Entrance Hall. "You are very young to have known the hurt that you have. And yet here you stand before me - perhaps not quite whole, but it will come, Ginevra. It will come."

Ginny stopped at the top of the main spiral staircase. Below her a tide of student were chattering and making their way through the front doors of the castle. It was a beautiful sunny day with not a cloud in the sky, and as she wiped away her tears, she felt a flicker of renewed strength.

"Thank you, Professor," she began, but when she turned to face him, she found that she was alone, and as she stared at the stretch of corridor behind her, she wondered if he had been there at all.

◊

The countryside flashed by as the train sped through miles and miles of trees and field. Ginny spent most of the journey with her head pressed against the glass window while Harlow, Linnea, and Luna giggled over a romance quiz in the Quibbler. Linnea kept glancing eagerly out of the window which made Harlow laugh.

"We aren't going to get there any faster with you gazing wistfully outside," she teased, nudging Linnea. "I'm sure Neville will launch himself at the train with a bouquet as soon as it pulls into the platform."

Linnea's apple cheeks reddened but she couldn't help but look pleased. "Do you think he'll like it?" she said anxiously, running a hand through her new shoulder-length curls, a departure from her usually Rapunzelesque hair.

"You look beautiful," Ginny said, not moving her forehead from the glass.

Harlow scoffed. "You're even more ravishing than when he saw you during Easter break," she assured her friend. "Anyway, I would think you would have been more interested in showing him the letter you received from the Ministry."

"It is quite an honor to be asked to serve with the Wizengamot right out of school," Luna put in mildly, flipping through the Quibbler with her eyes tightly squinted. "I expect he'll be pleased."

Linnea, however, looked miserable. "He wants to come back to Hogwarts," she said glumly, slumping back in her seat and crossing her arms. "Wants to work in the Herbology department. I don't know how we'd ever see each other."

"Love will find a way," Harlow singsonged. "Hermione's always travelling for 'spew' conferences and Ron is stuck at the Auror office as a paper pusher and they're doing alright, right Gin?"

"Yup," Ginny said, still not moving her head from the glass. When Ginny had returned to the Burrow for Easter, it had been to discover that Bill was expecting a baby with his wife Fleur, Fred and George's joke shop Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes was doing better than ever, and that Ron had somehow convinced Great Aunt Muriel to let him have her antique heirloom diamond ring, which he presented to Hermione on bended knee right in the middle of Easter pudding. The radiant joy on Hermione's face had been so pure and honest and real that even now, Ginny couldn't help smiling. Nobody deserved happiness more than Hermione did.

"What about you, Luna?" Harlow asked, sitting back in her seat and stretching. "Have you decided what you're going to do next?"

"Oh, work with Daddy, I expect," Luna said vaguely, bringing the magazine so close it obscured her face. "I think he said something about experimenting with Blibbering Humdinger capture in the Middle East. It shouild be rather enlightening."

"Nobody will be having more fun than you though, Harmony," Linnea said, smiling wryly. "Treasure hunting in Mongolia. You will be careful, won't you?"

"Pfft, careful," Harlow said derisively, waving a hand. "Life is adventure and I'm just getting started!"

Their compartment door opened and two heads poked in.

"Hi Luna," Kevin and Dennis said simultaneously with identical grins. "Hi Linnea. Hi Harlow. Hi Ginny."

"Hey!" Harlow said, tossing a leftover Chocolate Frog, which bounced off the wall and onto the floor. "Knock much? We could have been changing!"

"Sorry!" Dennis said as both boys came in and took the empty seats beside Ginny, jerking his head in the direction of the compartment behind them. "It's just that they're driving us crazy."

"Young love," Harlow said, amused. "You should be happy for your brother, Dennis. I mean, I'll be honest, I thought he was going to be looking after Ginny with those sad puppy dog eyes until he was elderly."

"I wish he still was," Kevin muttered.

Around Christmastime, Colin had fallen head over heels in love with Teresa Frobisher, the girl Ginny had met in the hospital wing last year on the day that Madam Pomfrey had told her she was pregnant. To everyone's slight surprise, she had fallen right back. The two had been inseparable for six months and made sure nobody within a ten foot radius at any time had any doubt for their mutual adoration. As the compartment fell silent, they could hear vague slurping noises indicating ferocious snogging coming from the adjacent compartment and Harlow laughed while Linnea merely smiled knowingly.

"You'll see," she said playfully nudging Kevin with her foot. "Love is really an amazing thing. You two will find out some day."

Both boys looked appalled. "No way!"

The sky slowly darkened and the boys were just wrapping up their fifth game of Exploding Snap when the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station. There were shouts and laughter as students dragged their trunks off the train, greeting family members and bidding farewell to friends and classmates. As predicted, Linnea flew straight into Neville's waiting arms and they immediately locked at the lip, inviting scandalized glances from neighboring parents. Kevin and Dennis disappeared into the crowd to find their respective parents and Harlow slung an arm around Ginny's shoulders as they dropped down onto the platform.

"Hard to believe it's all over, hey?" she said, leaning her brunette head against Ginny's red one. "I'm going to miss you like crazy, Gin. You'll write to me all the time, right?"

"Of course," Ginny said, and as she reached over to hug her best friend, she held on just a moment too long. "Not like I won't have spare time on my hands."

Despite her career planning the year before and her excellent N.E.W.T. grades, Ginny had no idea where her path led now. She had been offered a second string Quidditch position with the Wimbourne Wasps but wasn't sure she had the heart for endless training and a low salary in return for virtually nonexistent playing time. She had accepted a position as a part-time columnist for the Daily Prophet but it would barely pay enough for a desolate flat in London. Her brothers had assured her by owl that she had plenty of time to decide. Her mother had been thrilled that one of her children would be coming home to the Burrow for awhile still. Ginny, however, could hardly bear the thought of spending endless days helping Molly in the kitchen, dealing with the gnomes, silencing the ghoul in the attic, and assuring everyone that she was fine, just fine. She had written to Bill and Fleur, asking if she could come stay at Shell Cottage before heading to the Burrow, and they had enthusiastically agreed. Ginny didn't know what to expect, but she was sure that something new had to be better than the neverending bad dream she had been trapped in for a year.

Harlow squeezed her shoulders with a grin before bounding into the crowd to enclose Neville and Linnea in a group hug, despite the two latter being otherwise occupied. Luna drifted up to Ginny and smiled vaguely at Harlow's tangled group hug.

"It's nice to have friends," she said thoughtfully. "Don't you think?"

Ginny, who hadn't heard the question, merely nodded. When she glanced over at Luna, the girl was gazing at her, her wide protuberant eyes sincere.

"Everything will be all right in the end," she said. It was the first time in a long time someone had told her it would be instead of asking her if it was.

"And what if it's not?" she asked before she could stop herself. She felt her eyes stinging again.

Luna smiled. "Then it's not the end."

Ginny stared at her. Luna patted her on the back, still smiling vaguely, and disappeared back into the milling group of people. Ginny watched her go.

"Hey Gin!" Linnea called, squeezing out of Harlow's embrace, in which Neville was still trapped. "Who's coming to pick you up?"

"Nobody," Ginny replied, still staring after Luna. She had insisted that Bill not meet her and would take a taxi out of London before Apparating to the cottage. She was looking forward to the solo journey and the fresh sea air and her final glance at the scarlet steam engine was bittersweet before she passed through the enchanted barrier with her friends.

After long elaborate goodbyes, Ginny found herself quite alone. Dragging her trunk through the station and onto the sidewalk under the darkening summer sky, she kept repeating Luna's words. Everything will be alright in the end.

Ginny reached the end of the station, turned into an adjacent side road and stopped, leaning against the dusty brick wall, eyes closed.

And what if it's not?

She could hear cars zooming by. Snippets of passing conversation. The fluttery breeze of people walking by. Footsteps.

Then it's not the end.

They stopped.

"You're late."

Ginny opened her eyes.

Draco stood before her, wrapped in a long trench coat, his blond hair slightly longer than it had been the last time she had seen him. His face was as pale as ever but there was no mistaking the look in his cloudy grey eyes. Ginny stood, frozen, speechless.

They stood there just like that, staring at each other, neither so much as blinking. Ginny's mind was completely blank, and although it looked like Draco wanted to speak, he seemed to be having trouble remembering how. This was not the Draco that Ginny remembered - haughty, cold, defiant. As Ginny stared into his pewter eyes with her cinnamon ones, she saw the same vulnerability and pain that she felt throbbing in the very core of her heart.

Finally, Ginny forced herself to speak. "You disappeared." Her voice was flat, expressionless.

Draco didn't break the gaze. "I know."

"You didn't write."

"I know."

"You just left."

Silence. Ginny had to close her eyes against the persistent stinging that she was determined not to give way to. She had spent the past year reflecting back on how stupid she had been to think that when he said he wasn't going anywhere, that he had meant it. When she opened them, Draco had stepped closer. As she forced herself to look up at him once more, she was startled to see that his eyes were glistening.

"Ginny." It was one word but it hit her like a freight train to the stomach. She let out an involuntary sob and he instinctively reached out his hand but she did not move.

"You just left," she repeated. "You didn't even tell me where you were going. How could you do that to me?"

"Ginny, let me - "

"I just wanted you to be happy," she whispered, shaking her head, and tears sprinkled the ground like rainfall. "I wanted to let you be happy. But you could have told me where you were going. You could - you should have -"

Draco grabbed her arm, pulled her close. She choked out another sob and he put a hand under her chin, tipping it up so that she was looking at him.

"I have never been happy," he said, his voice low and cracking on the last syllable. "Never."

She stared up at him, her brown eyes swimming in tears she could not bear to shed more of.

"I left," he said, and one of her tears fell free. "I left because I'm a coward. Just like my father."

Ginny opened her mouth to intervene but he laid a finger on her lips.

"I took the Knight Bus to London," he said. "That night. The night you told me. I didn't even tell Blaise. I needed to get the fuck out, because I knew that I wouldn't be able to look at you ever again without feeling like my heart was being pulverized. Because I knew I would not be able to pass you in the corridor without grabbing you and holding on for dear life. Because I knew....I know that I will never be good enough for you."

"Draco - " she tried again, but he spoke over her.

"My father disowned me," he said, and for a moment she was so shocked that she forgot to keep breathing. "I told him I was fucking Granger."

"What?"

For the first time, a shadow of a smile passed over Draco's pale features. "Fuck, Gin, you should have seen his face."

Ginny stared open-mouthed.

"I've been working," he said, opening his trenchcoat to show her the work robes underneath. "Father's too ashamed to admit he now considers himself childless so he hasn't bothered to smear my name. I never got the chance to take my Charms N.E.W.T. so I got some private instruction from Cardona, the bloke who runs the Department for Magical Games and Sports, and then after Christmas he took me on." He pulled something from his pocket and held it out.

It was a photograph of a small cottage, a little run down but with a lush sprawling garden in place of a yard. At first Ginny thought it was a Muggle photograph until she noticed the willow trees on either side were swaying in a slight breeze.

"Is this your home?" she asked. It was beautiful in a rustic sort of way like the Burrow, but it was a far cry from the manor she knew he had grown up in.

"No," he replied. "It's just my house. But if you wanted to come live in this piece of shit with me, maybe it can become one."

There was a stunned silence.

"You're insane," Ginny said, staring at him.

He chuckled. Drawing his hand from his other pocket, he extended his palm. In it sat a thin silver band set with the merest shimmering diamond. It was no heirloom.

Ginny felt light-headed, dizzy. She stared at the ring and then back up at Draco, who looked more vulnerable than she ever imagined he could.

"I know," he said. "You need this first."

A single tear rolled down Ginny's pale freckled cheek, and as though by instinct, Draco reached out to wipe it away.

"I don't expect you to forgive me," he said, his voice barely audible over the sounds of the cars on the street beyond. "And I sure as hell don't expect you to settle for me. You deserve everything, Gin. You deserve the world, and I can't give you that right now. Shit, I don't know if I ever will be able to. But if you walk away right now, I need you to walk away knowing that there was never any other ending to my story than you."

He stepped forward.

Ginny's eyes continued to burn as they bore into his blazing grey ones but she could not look away. She had seen him in her dreams so many times that now that he was in front of her, his edges still shimmered as though he was not quite real. She reached out a hand and laid it on his chest, just to be sure. His heart beat a frenzied tattoo against her palm.

He raised his free hand and laid it over hers, stepping closer once more. "I love you with every cell in my body, Ginevra Weasley," he said, his voice low and steady. "I don't know when I started and I don't know how to stop. I love everything you are and everything I become when you're with me. I love you through every fight and every struggle and want to love you through a million more. I just spent three hundred and seventy seven days away from you, and if you ask me to, I will stay away. But not before you know that every happy memory I have has you in it and every future I see before me revolves around you. I make shit money. I live in a shack. All I can offer you is me, and I know it's not enough, but -"

Ginny stepped forward. The sun was setting over the distant horizon, and a gentle evening breeze was whistling through the alley like a familiar summer song. She reached up to close his hand over the ring he still had extended and gently guided it back to his side. His gaze remained steady, but the trepidation hung heavily in the air. Slowly, minutely, Ginny moved imperceptably closer.

"You were always enough," she said softly. She reached up to take his face in her hands. "That's all I ever wanted. Just you."

Draco's breathing had become heavy, ragged, and his eyes burned with a glistening fire as he reached for her.

Ginny closed the distance.

As their lips met, a thousand tiny sparkling lights exploded behind Ginny's eyelids. She felt one of his hands entangle itself in her mane of fiery hair as her mind raced fiercely, drawing back every determinedly buried memory of the laughter and tears and ecstasy and heartbreak with a flood of emotion so powerful that she whimpered. Draco broke away from her, his face a mere inch away, his gaze questioning. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. When she breathed in, the scent felt like home.

They stood there for a long time, their arms locked around each other, Ginny breathing in the scent of him as though she had just broken the surface of a deep ocean and Draco holding her waist with one hand and a fistful of hair with the other as though terrified she would disappear if he let go. Finally, Ginny drew back.

"Hi," she said, looking up at him, no more tears in her eyes. "I'm Ginny. I have seven brothers, my dad is kind of weird, and my mum is a little overbearing, but they just want me to be happy. My friends love me unconditionally. I just stepped off the school train for the last time and I'm not really sure what's next."

Finally, Draco's expression broke into the familiar smirk that made her heart smash against her rib cage in a frenzy.

"Nice to meet you," he mused, running a hand along her cheek. "Draco. No family but the friend who stuck around is a solid guy. I have a house and a job but I'm not sold on either. You see, there's this girl I'm pretty crazy about and I would follow her anywhere."

"An adventure sounds good to me," Ginny said with a smile. "Maybe one that leads to a fresh start."

Draco bent down to pick up the handle of her trunk, dropping the diamond ring into his pocket before taking her hand in his. It seemed to be unspoken between them that there would be plenty of time to revisit it - weeks, months, even years. In the meantime, it was a promise...the promise of infinite time before them, time to rewrite the ending to their story or even start a few new ones. As Draco leaned in to brush his lips against Ginny's once more, she exhaled before meeting his, and it was as though the past year was rushing from her lungs like carbon dioxide, clearing the way for her to continue to breathe his scent.

"Where to?" he murmured against her ear, and she gazed out past the dusty brick walls of the alley, her heart so full and light she felt as though it might burst. There would be a half dozen OWLs to write, explanations to be made, surprise and derision to face, but not tonight. Tonight was the first crisp, clean page of a new chapter in the tale that had brought her right here, right now to this moment, and she knew that there was no rush.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "As long as it's where you are."

They stepped into the open, into the final luminous rays of the June sun as it descended behind the London skyline before them, and just as there was nothing holding them back now, there was nothing holding them together. No promise of tomorrow. No promise of forever. Just a boy and a girl and two battered, broken hearts and a love so fierce that it was a wonder it couldn't be seen glowing between them. Ginny didn't know where they were going, how they would get there, or how long it would take. All she knew was that the love that blazed inside her was the most real thing she had ever known and she would follow it to any bitter or beautiful end.

Love had hurt. But as she continued hand-in-hand with Draco down the cobbled London streets towatds the blindingly brilliant sunset, she could feel it beginning to heal.

And for Ginny, frozen in perfect, blissful time, the promise of this moment, right now, with her hand warm in his was more than enough.

It was everything.